Site Provisioning and Governance Assistant for SharePoint

PremierPoint Solutions (formerly SharePoint Solutions) has recently released an updated version of their Site Provisioning and Governance Assistant product for on-premise deployments of SharePoint 2010 and 2013. SPGA is designed to address a common concern in enterprise SharePoint deployments – administrative control over site growth and proliferation. Anyone who has ever tried to contain the spread of SharePoint in a manageable and consistent way will appreciate how difficult it can be to enforce governance while at the same time allowing users to use the platform to its full potential.

I was fortunate to have a chance to work with the PremierPoint team to bring the new release of SPGA to market. In conjunction with their Extranet Configuration Manager product, SPGA provides administrators with the ability to define a wide range of rules surrounding the site creation process that support governance policies and objectives. Beyond simple workflows and item-level approvals, SPGA provides a toolbox for implementing flexible and repeatable processes for just about any scenario. This latest release includes some new features and functionality but the real news is that there is now a completely free version. You can download and install it on any SharePoint 2010 or 2013 farm and use the basic out-of-the-box actions without any time-limited expiration. I’m a big fan of the so-called "freemium" model and glad to see more SharePoint ISV’s adopting it. Obviously, each vendor would like to you to purchase their product after giving it a spin but if you are satisfied with the no-cost features the hope is that you will provide some word-of-mouth validation in return.

If you are so inclined, give SPGA a try and see how it works for you. You can download it here. If you give it a go be sure to let Jeff and the team at PremierPoint know how you like it and any improvements they can make.